DConf 2013 keynote

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Fri, 10 May 2013 18:59:23 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
[...snip Java vs D samples...]
> Talk about signal-to-noise ratio.
> 
> And don't get me started on all those BlahBlahBlahClassWrapper's and
> BlahBlahBlahClassWrapperFactoryWrapper's. Ugh. And Integer vs. int,
> and other such atrocities. What, built-in atomic types are defective
> so we need to wrap them in classes now? Flawed language design,
> anybody?
> 
> I find D superior to Java in just about every possible way. Except
[..snip..]
> 
> > Sometimes C++ give me hives, it's so error prone and an
> > under-productive language for the actual industry needs, that
> > certainly why Google created the Go.
> 
> Surprisingly enough, before I found D, I actually considered ditching
> C++ for C. I only stayed with C++ because it has certain niceties,
> like exceptions, (and no need to keep typing 'struct' everywhere on a
> type that's blatantly obviously a struct) that in C is a royal pain
> in the neck. C++ is just over-complex, and its complexity in
> different areas interact badly with each other, making it an utter
> nightmare to work with beyond trivial textbook examples. OO
> programming in C++ is so nasty, it's laughable -- if I wanted OO,
> Java would be far superior. 
> 

Yea. Somewhere close to 10 years ago, it was precisely the nightmarish
combination of C++ and Java that pushed me to do some language
searching which led me to (an early) D.

Learning Java taught me all the reasons to hate C++, but then Java also
went and threw away the *good* things about C/C++, too. As those
were the languages I needed to use the most, the constant "Which hell
do I want? Hell A or Hell B?" damn near soured me on programming in
general.

Then C# and D came along and made programmer life tolerable again ;)
I've since gotten tired of C# too, though. The limitations of its
generics, and MS's continued disinterest in fixing them, finally drove
me to ditch it forever. D by contrast has only gotten better with age.

> I found that C++ is only tolerable when I
> use it as "C with classes".

That's always been my strategy with C++. Originally because I didn't
know any of its fancier stuff, and now because I just don't want to
deal with any of its "frills".

Funny thing: I absolutely can't stand highly dynamic languages, period,
but after re-introducing myself to C/C++ on a project last year, I'm
understanding much better why so many game devs are so big on Lua.